When I was a kid, the Patriots were my team, but I didn't really care, you know what I mean? I got taken to a game once by a friend and it was the coldest I've ever been in my life. It was torture.
Coming from a small South Dakota school, it was a different route to get to the NFL. I went from South Dakota State to the World League of American Football with the Amsterdam Admirals, and fortunately I did well enough there that the New England Patriots decided to sign me and give me a chance.
I first learned about kicking under pressure in 1996, my rookie year with the Patriots. I was signed as a free agent by a team that already had Matt Bahr, one of the best kickers around. To win the job, I had to show coach Bill Parcells that I could make kicks when they counted. That process started in training camp.
Unlike in the U.K. or France or America, we've never used water cannon for mass riots dispersal.
How do we stop violence, looting, and riots? The way that we stop that is by making sure that people have the things that they need to thrive.
Protestants attacked Catholics during the 1844 Nativist riots in Philadelphia. Guess what that was about? Anti-immigrant sentiment. Back then, it was the influx of Irish Catholics into the city. Now, it's Donald Trump clinging to a bygone notion of Protestant ascendancy and nativist sentiments, when mainline Protestantism is on the wane in the U.S.
Empowerment is not about doing the same thing the same way in the same environment. It's about building the man and the woman and doing so with a view to creating better citizens and, by extension, better patriots in this society of ours.
We talk about how hard it is now. But if we look back at the '60s, we actually had a president that was assassinated. We had riots, we had Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the FBI, and the Black Panther war. There was so much happening at the time where it felt like America was coming apart at the seams.
I don't think any Patriots fan would want anything other than for Tom Brady to stay.
When I got the call that the Patriots were interested, it was a very surreal feeling. I've always looked up to watching them play. They've been a team that has a long history of winning. Just to be considered to be a part of this team is a great honor.
